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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29603127">Nowhere, Nevada</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mabrkbc/pseuds/mabrkbc'>mabrkbc</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Canada to Lebanon, Kansas [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:35:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,423</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29603127</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mabrkbc/pseuds/mabrkbc</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Canada to Lebanon, Kansas [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2174883</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Nowhere, Nevada</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It isn’t until Sam is home and safe that I finally get some (conscious) time to myself. After we get back, Mary heads off to her own room, Sam and Dean go down to the firing range to relax and talk about what happened, and Castiel disappears.</p><p>I make my way to the library and flop into a chair at the first table. I rest my head in my hands and finally allow myself to cry. The more time passes, the more I believe my family is gone forever. Sam and Cas got Dean back, Sam and Dean got their mom back…and I’m still here, alone. It doesn’t take long until my cries turn into full-body sobs.</p><p>After what feels like hours, but is probably more like forty-five minutes, I hear wings and look up to see Castiel standing on the other side of the table. His face is filled with sorrow and pity and I have to look away.</p><p>“The boys are probably still at the range,” I mumble, wiping at my face.</p><p>“I am not here to talk to them. I am here to talk to you, Melissa,” he says quietly. I glance up at him with furrowed eyebrows and he gestures to a seat. I nod, so he sits down and folds his hands in front of his body on the table. “I went to Heaven,” he starts. “I wanted to know if anything had changed since Chuck left or if Lucifer had shown up, since he was expelled from my body. There was no information on either issue, but I did learn something I thought you might be interested in.”</p><p>“Yeah?” I ask in a whisper, not sure what it is I could care much about.</p><p>“It’s about your father,” Cas says and that immediately has my attention.</p><p>“My dad? He’s - he’s dead, right? In Purgatory?” Cas shakes his head and my eyes get wide. “Is he…he’s…Cas, where’s my dad?”</p><p>He places a hand on top of one of mine and wraps his fingers around it. “He’s not in Purgatory. It seems, along with raising Mary Winchester and healing your wounds, either my father or Amara saw fit to restore your father’s human soul and raise him to Heaven, rather than leave him in Purgatory.” Cas says this with a smile on his face, and I want to smile back. I <em>want</em> to thank him for the good news, because it <em>is</em> good news, but instead, I feel my heart shatter into a million pieces.</p><p>Without saying another word, I stand up and walk to Dean’s room and curl up on his bed. I don’t have enough energy to cry but I can feel the tears slipping down my face while I stare off into nothing, cursing everyone I know.</p><p>Damn Cas for going to Heaven and learning this, wanting so badly to tell me so I would feel better. Damn Chuck or Amara or whoever for rescuing my father from Purgatory and placing him in Heaven with my family so they could be together. Damn Dean and Sam for entering my life and killing my father in the first place. Damn Mary Winchester for making me realize what I could have had and was denied.</p><p>Damn them all.</p><p>Broken, I close my eyes, needing to escape for a while. And I start to think about what my next step should be, because I don’t think I can stay. It hurts too much.</p><p> </p><p>I wake up to a dark room and a heavy arm thrown over my side, soft snores in my ear, and a warm body wrapped around me. I can tell that Dean had a few drinks with dinner by the way he snores and I smile to myself. He’s wrapped around me a little like an octopus, like he is whenever we’ve had an emotional day and he needs unconscious support. He even changed me from my jeans into a pair of his sweatpants to be more comfortable. I close my eyes and snuggle back into him, cocooning myself in his warmth, his love. Might as well do it now because at some point, it won’t be there anymore.</p><p> </p><p>My chance to leave doesn’t come until a couple days later when Mary finds a case. To them, it looks like a simple haunting. To me, it looks like my window of opportunity. “You guys can go without me,” I suggest. “Family bonding time.”</p><p>Dean grabs my elbow before I can leave the room. “Baby, you are family. You know that right?”</p><p>I shrug. “Yeah, but this is more mother and son time that none of you ever really had. That doesn’t include me.” Dean stares at me for a few more moments before he sighs and pulls me into a tight hug.</p><p>“You’re right. I don’t like it, but you’re right. We’ll be back soon, okay?”</p><p>I look up at him and smile. “I know you will.” <em>But I won’t be here.</em></p><p> </p><p>When I leave, I leave my phone and IDs on the bed, so they know how not to find me. I don’t want to be found, and thanks to Castiel and the marks on my ribs, they’ll have a hard time doing it. I pack up all my things before leaving a note. One for Sam and Cas and Mary (if she cares) and one for Dean. The gist is the same - I can’t be here anymore, not when they’ve gotten everything they could possibly want and I’m still just me, alone, grieving, and vulnerable. I need to be somewhere else, <em>someone</em> else. So that’s what I’m going to do.</p><p>Eight months later they finally catch up to me, and none of us saw it coming. It was entirely unintentional from every point of view, but what’s done can’t be undone. I had settled in a small town in southern Nevada, needing something warm and sunny to contrast the cold I was used to in Canada, and I needed to be somewhere Dean wouldn’t think to look. I spent the next eight months taking every type of self defense classes available, took up knife and ax throwing as extracurriculars, spent at least an hour every day at the shooting range, and enrolled myself in the local college as a language major with a minor in mythology. Living with Sam and Charlie did leave me with some skills, notably in the computer hacking department, and I managed to hack into my parent’s old bank accounts and drain them to a new one I had set up.</p><p>I had a studio apartment of my own above a small, local coffee shop that offered me a part-time job. I made a few friends in my classes both at school and on my own time, and, most importantly, I became, if I do say so myself, a badass. I wasn’t defenseless anymore and studying lore texts in my spare time meant I felt pretty knowledgeable on the supernatural world. Which is why, when an article came up in the town over from me that screamed vampires, I thought I could take on my first case. Might as well embrace the life I’d been thrown into, and now was as good a time as any.</p><p>After canvasing for a few hours during the day and interviewing local cops and EMTs, I have a pretty good idea where I might find a few of the vamps. The dive bar on the edge of town, which is so cliche it hurts, seems to be their hunting ground, so that’s where I find myself sitting on a Thursday night. I’ve set myself up at the end of the bar-top so I can see everyone coming in and out, but get distracted when I think I finally spot the leader. He’s not hiding at all, obviously leering after the young, intoxicated, defenseless young men and women. When he glances at me, I simply tilt my head to the side with a considering look and smirk right back at him. His eyes narrow to slits, and I know without a doubt that he’ll be at my side in less than thirty minutes.</p><p>That is until I turn back to face the door and see two very familiar faces staring directly at me, one with murder in his eyes and the other with a gaping jaw. I grimace and shrink into myself, eyes darting around for an escape before this gets ugly because this is not the place nor the time to reunite with the Winchesters. But Dean has a different plan.</p><p>He storms over to me and crowds me back down into my bar stool before I can even stand. “What the <em>fuck</em>, Melissa? Where have you <em>been</em>? Do you have any idea how fucking worried I was? You just dropped off the map! What the fuck were you thinking,” he hisses at me, reaching out to grab my shoulder. In a stroke of oddly timed luck, that’s when the vampire decides to make his move.</p><p>“Hey, man,” he says smoothly, sliding in next to me and wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “I think you outta back up a step or two. Can’t imagine what this pretty young thing could’ve done to get you this worked up, but I don’t think this is a good time.” He flashes a smug grin at the boys before turning to me, squeezing my shoulder. “What do you say we get out of here, sweetheart? I know a better place where we won’t be accosted by heathens in denim,” he snarks with a sickly smile that makes me want to take at least three showers. But instead, I smile back at him and hop off my stool.</p><p>“I think that’s a great idea,” I say and gesture for him to lead the way. Keeping his arm around me, I glance back at Dean as he guides me away, and he is furious. No doubt he’s come to the same conclusions I have about who this man is and what sort of danger I’ve just put myself in, but what he doesn’t know yet, is I can handle myself.</p><p>Or so I had thought, until I wake up with a sharp pain at the back of my head and a vampire attached to my neck. They have my hands chained above my head so I’m hanging slightly from the roof of a dilapidated cabin they seem to be squatting in and my pal from the bar is sitting off to the side watching his nest feed on me. I narrow my eyes at him, hissing at the pain of the bite.</p><p>“What,” I snap at him. “Getting your rocks off watching your bitches drain me, or what?” The vampire on my neck pulls back with a sharp gasp and slaps me hard across the face, before grabbing my jaw.</p><p>“Watch your tongue, whore, before I cut it out,” she hisses. The leader stands and moves to place a calming hand on her shoulder, tsking at her.</p><p>“Now, now, Andy, I think she should get her answer. And she’ll learn in time the proper way to address us all, but especially me,” he says with a grim smile before gesturing to her to leave, leaving me alone with him. He crosses his arms and looks down at me, contemplative. “You were with the Winchesters at that bar.” A statement, not a question, so I keep my mouth closed. “Who are you to them? Will they come for you?”</p><p>I glare at him in response, refusing to give him the satisfaction of an answer. He waits a few seconds before growling and slapping me again. “Answer me,” he snarls, but I just snort.</p><p>“Buddy, you are way out of your league here. Kill me, don’t kill me, I could not give a shit either way. But you can’t intimidate someone with nothing left to lose who’s been tortured by psychopaths with much more time and creativity on their side,” I snap back at him. He reels back at that, before smiling that horrible smile.</p><p>“I could turn you,” he says softly, tapping a finger against his chin. “Maybe then you’d feel differently.” I don’t respond to that, but I have no doubts he can hear my heartbeat increase. He laughs. Leaning forward, he brushes my hair back behind my shoulder almost gently before whispering softly, “Everyone has something to lose. Maybe you think you don’t, but trust me. Losing your humanity is the last and worst thing to go.” With that, he leaves me hanging and walks out of the room. I swallow hard at that, suddenly terrified he’s going to come back and turn me right away. Thank God I have a bobby pin hidden in my hair to pick this lock.</p><p>By the time Sam and Dean finally catch up and burst through the door, I’m slicing through the last vampire’s neck, covered in blood, but still human. They stand in the doorway in shocked silence before Sam finally steps forward, sheathing his machete. “Uh, are you hurt?” I shake my head at him and just look around, mentally counting bodies in my head.</p><p>Looking back at them, speaking to them for the first time in almost a year, I ask, “Did you see any outside? I only saw eight, but I don’t want to miss one. Also, I don’t have any gasoline. Did you bring some?” Dean’s jaw drops and he too puts his machete away, before stepping forward to say something, but flounders. After a few seconds of just moving his mouth with no sound, he turns around and goes back outside, hopefully to get some gas.</p><p>I just blink after him before I start to gather all the heads and bodies together to make it easier to burn. I can almost hear Sam open his mouth to start talking before I whip around to face him and shake my head. “Don’t, Sam. Not now, okay?” He steps towards me and I almost take an instinctive step back before I remember that this is <em>Sam</em>, he would never hurt me, ever. Until he reaches for my hand and holds my wrist up for inspection. I grimace and try to pull it back before he sees the burns and cuts I got when I was fighting with the cuffs, but it’s too late. He drops my hand and gives me a sad look that promises conversation and starts to help me with the bodies.</p>
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